Desert Chapter: Overcoming Complacency

There were two things which made me think about being complacent in my life. The first one was when a company asked me to do a Java test as a response to my application. I was quite confident with my skills in Java since I had a near-perfect score for Sun certification two years back. However, it did not turned out the way I expected. The test covered a wider range than Sun certification. Worse still, I messed up some fundamental questions which I would have answered well last time. So, I failed the test.

The second thing was an interview. As an opening question the interviewer was asking on what I was doing at the moment. To which I blurted out that I was looking for work. After the interview, I realised that I was effectively saying that I was doing nothing while looking for work. I did not get a second interview with that company.

All these made me realise that I was being complacent. I have replaced the desire to learn new things with past achievement I could put in my resume. And that is not a good thing for long term because of the dynamic nature of technology and also the technical atrophy that results from not using some technologies.

At this I decided to make use of the time to refresh my knowledge and learn new things so that at least my CV does not get outdated due to my rustiness. This realisation is another thing I find valuable from this desert experience.